"Fair winds and following seas,"

Arrived on St. Croix Wednesday evening. Had a couple problems in San Juan with our connecting flight on Seaborne Airlines. What we saw of San Juan by air and talking to people on the ground was a lot of blue FEMA tarps on rooftops, a lot of street lights and traffic signals still out, and people told uspotable water is still a big problem and much of the island still has no power/sporadic outages.

St. Croix has a lot of debris including downed wires and telephone poles lying alongside roads pushed off to the side. The roads are riddled with large potholes. About 50% of the island has power, but there are still sporadic outages. I talked to a couple of electrical grid workers yesterday who are here from New York helping to restore power. They and about 100 other stateside workers are living on a ship docked in Fredriksted at the cruise ship dock. The said they are making progress in sometimes difficult situations, like up in the hills and the rain forest, but feel the lines will be in better shape than before the storm when they are done.

The private school where my wife used to teach is open, but a lot of families that had children attending have left the island since the storm so their enrollment is way down.

Most businesses in downtown Christiansted are open. Some restaurants, dive shops, and bars around the shoreline were destroyed or damaged and are not open.

The two major resorts on the island, the Buccaneer and Carambola, are open and begging for customers.

Grocery stores are open and have a decent selection. Home Depot and other hardware stores and equipment supply businesses are doing their best to keep up with demand. Potable water is not a problem if you can get to the places that distribute it.

Finally, Cruzan Rum is doing what it has been doing on the island for over 7 generations. Rum is plentiful on island.